Consider: By day, Hosking is an in-demand businessman,
surrounded by lovely women and working on large-scale projects à la Bruce
Wayne. By night, he oversees crime-fighting while hanging out with Christopher
Nolan and flying a souped-up helicopter he built.

Of course, we know Hosking is not the Caped Crusader. What
he is, as he said, is the "luckiest kid in the world."

Hosking is in demand as a Hollywood stunt coordinator and
pilot. He's not Bruce Wayne, but he did work with Christian Bale (who portrayed
the troubled crime-fighter) in Nolan's "Dark Knight" trilogy.

And the lovely women? Sure, sometimes Hosking can be seen
with the likes of Anne Hathaway (Catwoman in "The Dark Knight Rises") and
Marion Cotillard (Talia al Ghul), but more often than not he's surrounded by
his wife, Kelly Mac, and his stepdaughter, soon-to-be Lewiston-Porter High
School senior Michelle.

Hosking
and his family flew into town this week from their part-time home in
California. He was on his way to Michigan, where he was to finish work on the
Steven Spielberg-produced film "Need for Speed" (which, ironically, features
the other Bruce Wayne, Michael Keaton). In between meetings with friends,
Hosking spoke of how he entered Hollywood's elite inner circle.

It all began in Utah, where he said his childhood wasn't
all that different from what it might've been had he grown up in Western New
York. There was, however, one notable difference.

"I learned to fly airplanes from my dad at age 8, and then
he taught me how to fly helicopters at age 12," he said. "And then you have to
be 16 in order to fly solo. And so on my 16th birthday, I soloed in two
different kinds of planes and two different kinds of helicopters.

"It's like around here a farm kid on a tractor, you know?
It's just our tractor was a helicopter. So we got to start at a really young
age."

Hosking didn't just learn to fly. He also discovered how
to create aircraft of his own.

"Yeah, before I got into the film business, I was in the air show business and I had a
pet special Aeromatic airplane that I built that has wheels on top and wheels
on the bottom. It can take off and land upside down."

He
retired from air show business in the mid-90s, right as his film career was
taking off.

"As
a kid growing up, I grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, my dad had a helicopter
charter company, which is, of course, how I got started," Hosking said. "The
generation before me, Hollywood pilots, would come to Utah and they'd use my
dad's helicopter to work on movies around Moab and Grand Canyon ... Red Rocks,
Monument Valley, Zions - all those national parks there are beautiful places to
film; the salt flats; things like that. So those guys would come use my dad's
helicopter, so I got to know them. And I could see there was going to be a big
opening in a generation, because the guys were my dad's age then. So, in '87 I
moved to L.A. full-time and started my film career."

Hosking,
55, was a natural fit, and soon landed top studio jobs.

"Well,
it's an interesting combination," he said. "For me, I learned photography as a
hobby, and flying as a profession - much the same as my father. My father
started out as a photographer in the Army, and then he converted to flying. So
it's kind of just in our blood. It's just what we do. We had a darkroom in our
house when I was growing up. My dad, we would shoot our own photos and develop
them. So, just a love of photography and a love of flying - it was just a
natural to combine those.

"And
so, when I moved to L.A. in '87, that was it. The first few times I went out on
a job, I found that flying the helicopter and maneuvering for a shot was the
same thing I would do with my camera if I was trying to line up a background or
a beautiful reflective sun reflecting off the ocean as a ship passes through
it. It's just camera composition, and I already knew that; I got it, because I
was a photographer. So, my career progressed very quickly once the directors
and producers and cameramen found out that I could really position - I had that
sixth sense to position for a shot. My career took off pretty rapidly.

"It
was just a nice combination of skills as a pilot and a cameraman."

While
Hosking can't name one film he's worked on as his favorite - "There's been so
many fabulous experiences," he said - two flight-related films stand out.

"Working
with Martin Scorsese on 'The Aviator' was really a great project for me because
... it's the legend, himself, Martin Scorsese. It was about Howard Hughes' life,
which was of interest to me - it was all about the aviation part of Howard
Hughes' life. So that was quite an epic experience," Hosking said.

He
cites the 1991 film "The Rocketeer" as a career-breakthrough.

"I
got to work as the aero coordinator there, and I got to fly a lot of those old
race planes - the Thompson Trophy race planes," Hosking said. "There was a Gee
Bee that I flew - and Gee Bee had a nasty reputation, and everybody who'd flown
them had crashed them. Except Jimmy Doolittle. And Jimmy Doolittle was still
alive at the time. And so when we started filming 'Rocketeer,' I went and
talked to him about the Gee Bee. And he said, 'Well, if you can fly it and not
wreck it, that will make two of us on the whole face of the history of the
Earth.' And I was able to fly it and not wreck it. But, boy, it was a vicious,
vicious, difficult airplane to land."

In
recent years, Hosking has worked with noted film genius Nolan on "Batman
Begins," "The Dark Knight," "The Dark Knight Rises" and "Inception."

"He's
an epic, epic filmmaker," Hosking said. "In my mind, it's he and Spielberg who
are really the kings of Hollywood. And Chris is just a masterful filmmaker. So,
I've been lucky to be on his team for a lot of years, now."

Hosking
also worked on Johnny Depp's "The Lone Ranger," which hits theaters next week.

"Right
now is about as busy as it gets," he said. "We've been doing 'Need for Speed,'
which is the one that we're leaving for tomorrow to go to Detroit. We're
tailing off with that one - that one's just about to the end. We're just
gearing up with three other ones, and we're able to juggle them."

Hosking
is working with Nolan on "Interstellar"; with longtime Nolan director of
photography Wally Pfister on "Transcendence"; and with director Michael Mann on
an untitled cyber-thriller.

Mac,
who rode with Hosking in his helicopter on their second date almost a decade
ago, said, "I think this culture is very interesting. It's very fast-paced.
(But) it's not as glamorous as we all think it is."

"There's
so many people behind the scene that don't get the credit that they deserve,
that work so hard," she added. "I've gone on location with him, and he's up
before the sunrise, because they've got shots that they need to catch. And he's
home, if I'm lucky and on location, he'll be done by 8 o'clock. Twelve, 13-,
14-hour days. It's reshooting over and over and over and over again. He's
definitely the best in the business."

When
Hosking hits the road, his friend, Town of Lewiston Justice Hugh Gee, often
accompanies him. The two of them have worked as a team since 2010, when Gee
retired after 32 years with the Niagara Falls Water Board.

"I
retired in December; had the retirement party in January - Jan. 20, actually.
(Craig) showed up from California. He showed up at the retirement party, and he
came in, he said, 'This is how I find out you're retired?' And Jan. 28 I was
working on my first Ram truck commercial in the Mojave Desert," Gee said. "The
next two days worked a Ford Fusion commercial in another part of the Mojave
Desert. And both of those commercials played in the Super Bowl the following
week."

The
judge, and Hosking's other friend, Chris Strassburg, both work as local safety
coordinators on the production sets.

"If
I had done this job 32 years earlier, I never would've went to work," Gee said.
"I could've been doing this my entire life."

He
called Hosking smart, trusted and sought-after.

"(He's)
one of, if he's not the top, respected film pilots," Gee said.

"He's
very, very (talented)," he added. "He's one in a million, that's for sure."